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London Knights goalie Anthony Stolarz smothers a loose puck before Kitchener Rangers forward Domenic Alberga can get to it during
Game 1 of their OHL quarterfinal at Budweiser Gardens on Friday. (CRAIG GLOVER, The London Free Press)

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Matt Rupert was supposed to be on the ice when the London Knights got their first power play of their second-round series against Kitchener.

But he needed some skate work done on the bench.

Head coach Dale Hunter looked around in a hurry for a replacement.

“He was yelling for Ryan Rupert’s unit to go out there and finally he just told me to go because no one was moving, right,” Tyler Ferry said.

Eleven seconds later, he buried the go-ahead-for-good goal and the defending OHL champs struck first with 4-1 win over the Rangers before 9,046 Friday night at Budweiser Gardens.

Ferry, the defence-first former 15th rounder, is the little veteran bulldog the Hunter refuse to take out of their lineup.

Before the game, he was shifted to forward because captain Scott Harrington’s return squeezed him off the blue line.

He has 10 career goals and five of them are game-winners — two of those to sink Kitchener in series openers against John Gibson, the best major junior goalie on the planet at the moment.

Ferry laughed when asked if he haunted the Rangers stopper.

“It was pretty sweet,” he said. “I’m happy my mom and dad were here, my aunt and uncle and cousins, too. They got to see it and I guess I got to put on a little show for them.”

The understudy grabbed the leading role.

There’s a lot of that going around.

London’s fourth line played like a first line again. Kyle Platzer, the Waterloo native, answered Matt Puempel’s goal on Kitchener’s first shot and the Knights roared to life, dominating the first 20 minutes.

Platzer, fellow rookie Remi Elie and tough guy Paxton Leroux have six goals in their last three games. At one point, Kitchener GM and head coach Steve Spott matched his top line against them. The Rangers desperately need one of their depth lines to keep up.

“We need production out of (Brent) Pedersen, (Justin) Bailey and (Matia) Marcantuoni,” Spott said. “They don’t have a goal in six games. Two of those guys are first-round picks and Justin Bailey could’ve been a first-round pick. We need to create offence out of those guys.

“There’s no sugar-coating that.”

Dale Hunter got lucky when he sent Ferry out for that first power play.

But the move he made to set up the third goal was all about his keen sense of knowing who to have on the ice at the right moment. After watching them come close in the third, Hunter chose to double-shift the dangerous line of Chris Tierney, Alex Broadhurst and Max Domi.

Tierney busted to the net and tipped home the insurance marker that buried the Rangers for good.

“I think we were feeling the momentum a bit and our whole line was hungry all night,” the San Jose prospect said. “We thought we had chances, we just weren’t converting. Dale put us out, usually whoever he throws out seems to work, and we wanted to put the team on our backs and score that goal to separate it.”

Olli Maatta threw the puck Tierney’s way and it tipped right off the shaft of his stick past Gibson. They had hooked up this same way in a big spot last spring.

“We were joking about it after the goal,” Tierney said. “It looked a lot like the one against Niagara (to win Game 3 of the OHL final late in the third period). It was our connection, Olli and I called it.

“After that goal, we felt we could grip our sticks a little less out there.”

Now, it’s up to Kitchener to overcome that feeling of doubt and find some heroes — intentional or otherwise.